Mistaken Identity. Shirlee McCoy
see the direction her body had taken, the dirt and rocks that had tumbled with her.
Near the bottom, the light fell on pale skin, light brown hair. Jeans. Jacket. A woman for sure. Motionless.
Dead?
He hoped not. She might be a trespasser, but she didn’t deserve to die for that. He tucked the light back in his pocket and the woman jumped up.
“Hey!” he called. “Hold on!”
She’d heard. He was certain of that.
She didn’t listen.
She ran toward the lake, moving quickly enough that he wasn’t all that concerned about her being injured.
He scrambled down the rest of the slope, racing across pebbly earth. She was yards ahead of him, illuminated by moonlight as she waded into the water and dove below its surface.
If he didn’t get her out, she’d die there, the cold stealing her strength and her life before she even knew it was happening.
He moved along the shore, his light dancing across the dark lake. She’d gone down, and she hadn’t come back up, but he could see the small ripples on the surface of the water, subtle signs that she was moving beneath it. He shrugged out of his coat, his handgun zipped into an interior pocket, unbuttoned the dress shirt he’d worn to John’s funeral and dropped that on top of it.
He waited until she surfaced, her head popping up as she gulped for air.
That was it. All the opportunity he needed.
He waded into the frigid water and went after her.
The water was freezing.
That wasn’t something Trinity had been thinking about when she’d decided she could swim to the lights that glimmered on the far shore. Houses. Businesses. People. She was thinking about the water temperature now. She was also thinking about how far the opposite shore really was. Farther than it looked. She was a good swimmer, but the cold was already affecting her muscles, and her movements were sluggish and slow.
She could turn back, but he was there—the man who’d been standing on the slope, shining his light down at her.
She didn’t know who he was.
She didn’t want to know.
She just wanted to escape him, find some place to hunker down and think through her options. She’d have to swim parallel to the shore and find a safe place to exit the lake. Preferably before hypothermia set in. At the rate things were going, that wouldn’t be long. She was already shivering, her teeth chattering.
Make a plan. Stick to the plan.
That was one of Chance’s mottos.
The problem was that he’d never explained what to do if the plan wasn’t working out. Probably because his plans always worked out.
Trinity’s? Not so much.
Look at her relationship with Dale. She’d had it all planned out. The two years of dating. The year-long engagement. The happily-ever-after.
Only, two years had turned into three and there’d been no sign of dating ever becoming anything more. That had made her worry that maybe Dale wasn’t as committed to forever as she was.
Turned out, he wasn’t.
It also turned out that she would have realized that long before the three-year mark if she hadn’t been so committed to her poorly conceived plan.
This plan? The one that had her swimming across the lake to safety? It was just as bad.
She glanced back at the shore. She was a few hundred yards from it. No sign of the guy who’d been chasing her. He’d probably realized she was going to die without any help from him. Maybe he was sitting in the shadows of the trees, waiting for her to drown and make his job easier.
She gritted her teeth to keep them from knocking together. There had to be a place that was safer than the beach, an area of thick foliage and deep shadows, but her eyes didn’t seem to be working well and her arms didn’t seem to want to paddle. Her legs felt heavy and she wanted to close her eyes and float for just long enough to regain her strength.
If she did, she’d die.
She was still coherent enough to realize that, but it wouldn’t be long and her brain would slow as much as her body had. She turned toward the beach, desperate to get out of the water before that happened. All thoughts of the man and the danger he represented were gone. She had more immediate things to worry about. Like freezing to death or drowning or—
An arm wrapped around her, and she was yanked back against a hard body, her arms pinned at her sides. She tried to scream, but all that emerged was a quiet squeak. Tried to fight, but she was trapped by a steel-like arm and her own weakness.
She kicked backward, trying to free herself.
“Stop,” a man growled.
But she kicked again, the icy water splashing up into her face.
“You want us both to drown?” he asked, dragging her closer to his body. They were heading toward the shore. She could feel that, and she knew the exact moment his feet touched the lake bottom, because he hefted her up like a sack of potatoes, tossing her over his shoulder in a fireman carry that forced every bit of air from her lungs.
She should have kept fighting, but the wind was howling, and she was freezing, her body trembling so violently, she thought she might shake into pieces.
Seconds later she was lowered to her feet. Gently. Surprising since she figured the guy was about to kill her.
“That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen anyone do,” he said.
“Not as stupid as firing a gun at an innocent person,” she retorted.
“Equally stupid acts, lady. One will get you killed. The other could kill someone else,” he growled, grabbing a coat from the ground and pulling a handgun from somewhere inside it.
Her blood went as cold as her body was, and she took a step back.
“Relax,” he muttered. “If I’d wanted to hurt you, it would have been done already. It’s not like you’re in any shape to fight.”
“I could fight if I needed to.” Maybe.
“Hopefully, you won’t have to put that to the test.” He checked the safety on the gun, tucked it into the waistband of his pants and tossed the coat around her shoulders.
It was still warm from his body, and she wanted to pull it over her soaked hair and huddle under it until some of the warmth seeped into her. She was afraid if she did, she’d close her eyes and wake up locked in a basement somewhere.
Or, worse, not wake up at all.
“Maybe you should think about that next time you decide to fire a shot and then chase a person through the woods. Not many people are going to take kindly to that, and most of them are going to do exactly what I did and—”
“I wasn’t the one who fired the gun, and I wasn’t chasing you anywhere.” He lifted what looked like a white dress shirt, shook it out and pulled it on.
Unlike her, he’d been thinking before he’d dived into the lake.
His pants were soaked, but his shirt wasn’t.
She, on the other hand, was still shaking with cold, her wet clothes clinging to her skin. “Look, it’s freezing. How about we just call it a night? You go your way. I go mine. No harm, no foul.”
“That,” he murmured, “is a matter of opinion.”
“What’s that supposed to...?” Her voice trailed off because the